Some
scholars reckon that Kolkata’s name comes from
Kali Ghat, the great Kali temple after which is called the
district where I live, near Rash Behari Crossing. Kali is
the goddess of time. Black faced and pulling a red tongue,
she wears a garland of skulls and holds a sword to sever
time and frighten the Brits. She is a good goddess though
and local people love her and worship her, asking for shelter
and help that she may truly provide. Quite near the huge
Kali temple is Mother Theresa’s mission. A sign says: ‘Missionaries
of charity, Nirmal Hrday, estd 1952, Mother Theresa’s
home for the sick and the dying destitute’. On the
balcony, I can see a nun watching the colourful Indian street
scene around the temple, and the superman-sized statue
of
Jesus crucified on his wooden cross. Along the street, thousands
of vendors sell holy images, holy food, holy gadgets to a
joyfull crowd that flocks for a puja or just a visit to the
goddess. I am not sure that full respect and pure friendship
exist between Theresa and Kali, though. It’s an old
story. Kolkata has been straddling East and West for the
past four or five centuries. It is among the most Indian
of India’s megalopolises and it is indeed the most
European city in India.

Rash Behari Crossing is one of the most hectic crossroads
in the city. It is the beginning of Mukherjee road, the largest
north/south flow in Calcutta with Rash Behari, a major east/west
axis, in the nearby southern section of town. My hotel is
called Transit House and is located one block off this crossroad
where Raj Bansanta Roy road meets Sardar Sankar road. You
would expect the location to restrain some of the madness
due to the chaotic traffic running up, down and sideways.
Along with cars, rickshaws, motorcycles and heavy lorries,
this crossroad carries a dense bus traffic and also several
lines of the famous sky blue tramway that runs from the different
edges of the city. Calcutta’s transportation system
works like a fine-tuned Swiss clock, but a noisy one. Rash
Behari Crossing also shelters an important subway station,
Kali Ghat, that disgorges hundreds of commuters every few
minutes. Three blocks north, tens of thousands of pilgrims
converge towards Kali Ghat every day. And to the east of
the crossroad is Lake Market, one of the biggest food markets
in town.

But, believe it or not, my Transit House hotel is located
in the most peaceful neighbourhood you can imagine. This
is part of the magic of the city. Outside what is called
Central Calcutta and off the main roads, you feel you’re
in the country. Calcutta is a patchwork of very serene neighbourhoods
where village life can be enjoyed. One village is centred
round a dam, another one juts up against a temple, a different
one surrounds a school or ancient mansion. In a particular
neighbourhood, less now than before, most inhabitants know
one another. Ask for Shyamal here or for Abhijit there, everyone
will point you to the right house with a smile of connivance.
They know very well who Shyamal or Abhijit are; they know
their habits and most of their friends.

As in most remote areas, life begins with the first birdsong
in my neighbourhood. At six o’clock, the day is clear
and some bicycles as well as a few cars drive up and down
Raj Basanta Roy road. But the first visible economic activity
starts at seven when the newspaper is being delivered. ‘Life
begins with the reading of the news from the previous day
in Bengal,’ says my friend Dipankar, ‘nothing
can be done before that.’

The Standard is distributed in English or in Bengali versions
by cyclists who wedge their papers up against the handlebar.
They dismount their cycle from place to place, chat here,
salute there, and slowly dawdle along the streets delivering
with languid gestures the last news about Nandigram* and
the rest of the world. Curiously, even at this very early
hour, some moms or dads will be escorting their duly uniformed
schoolchildren to start their learning day.

At the extremity of Raj Basanta Roy, the families who have
spent the night on the sidewalk near Mukherjee road still
sleep deeply, bodies enlaced. The shops are closed on the
avenue; the traffic is scarce. The first real activity begins
when the initial Indane truck arrives from the outside world.
Indane is a gas company, delivering propane throughout the
country. All through the day, these trucks will park along
the sidewalk facing the hotel, just a few hundred yards east.
Then you will hear the clanking of propane bottles being
unloaded from lorries and loaded on tricycles that carry
a dozen bottles at a time, delivering them across the neighbourhood,
ringing their bells. ‘Goods carrier, Public transporter’ says
the front of the lorry while the back reminds to ‘obey
traffic laws’. That is Indane’s contribution
to the world order and local Dharma.

This neighbourhood shows signs of its colonial past. At that
time, one and an half centuries ago, it was an Indian district.
The British, as in all their colonies, had the peculiar habit
of not mixing with the ‘locals’. They had invented
the Centre where Imperial architecture of the proudest style
can still be admired on decaying facades, rotted by the many
monsoons, with the complicity of a communist rule that controls
the level of rents and keeps them low. But, around Kali Ghat,
the Indian bourgeoisie had built fairly big mansions of a
design mixing British building technology with a discreet
traditional Mughal style: bow windows, long free-running
balconies, floral symbols upon delicate cornices and peacock
images in stained glass. Those houses have now been sectioned
into many apartments, reduced every year by the pressure
of urban speculation that strikes Calcutta as savagely as
all big cities of the world.

In the early morning the sugarcane juice vendor who will
later take his post on Rash Behari and Sardar Sankar road,
follows a personal path. He stands for short ten minutes
periods on selected crossroads inside the neighbourhood at
fairly precise moments; he waits for local customers to come
down from their apartments and enjoy a long glass of sweet,
green, delicious juice. At that time of the day, the carpenter
who runs a workshop on Sardar Sankar, spreads out his work
on the sidewalk: with many tools, large pieces of plywood
and friends or helpers, he uses the public space for private
matters.

Five meters away, towards Rash Behari road is a public fountain.
There you are in urban India! Throughout the day, this fountain
will be used by children, men and women alike, as a public
bathroom. The user squats on the kerb and splashes his or
herself with running water, foaming the soap on his/her body
with vigour, then rinsing the soap before letting the sun
dry his/her shining dark skin. From that fountain a permanent
parade of carriers also irrigate nearby houses. Two, and
sometimes four, 20 litre cans are suspended on both sides
of a wooden pole. The pole is set on a man’s shoulders
and carried from the fountain. The man walks barefoot with
very short paces, eager not to spill the precious liquid
he is paid a few rupees to carry to some distant kitchens.
Sometimes women also carry water, but in a different fashion
for they use the bright yellow, copper, balloon-shaped pitchers
that they carry on their head like they used to do in the
remote Bengali, Behari or Tamil villages where they come
from. This is the mellow life that seems to flow in Calcutta.

When asked about themselves, my Calcuttan friends tend to
reckon that Bengalis are proud, brilliant and nonchalant.
Most of my friends here are middle class urban professionals
turned sceptical about economics and big prophecies, thus
searching the keys to, or the outposts for a new world. They
meet several times a week in informal but determined encounters
called addas where they read poetry and short stories aloud,
discuss politics and philosophy, drink not too much beer,
smoke cigarettes but also bidees, and enjoy their life as
it goes. Brilliant, they are indeed. My presence first of
all switches them into English. Then it induces debates about
the wake of colonialism in the day-to-day life, about the
creativity of contemporary Indian cinema or about the history
of the Naxalite movement. But we also go into very up-to-date
subjects, offered by a rich and intense political activity.
Everyday, the papers bring new evidence about Nandigram and
the topic seems to inflame most Bengalis. All these debates
are precisely argued and most of the speakers can quote VS
Naipaul, Tagore, but also Edward Saïd, Fukuyama and,
to my surprise Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze. Nonchalant,
they probably are; they never worry about time and love to
meet in the Jadevpur coffee house whenever they can. In a
way, they even pretend to be irresolute, but that, I can
assure, is untrue. Two accidental discoveries gave me an
hint of how active Calcuttans are.

One is the number of modest but active magazines published
here. Small format, from 50 to 80 pages, treating many subjects
from art to politics, from economics to literature, and so
on, each of these reviews offer a specific perspective on
the world and the city. Not reading Bengali, I cannot give
an opinion on the content but I can testify to the determined
effort made by those sustaining these reviews and the radical
viewpoint asserted by the managing editors who invest most
of their life into this achievement. In Calcutta there is
even a museum of those reviews where they can all be found
and compared by readers who have missed an issue or want
to deepen their knowledge of a subject. Apart from serious
discussions, my friends were a joyful bunch of good humoured
people, men and women alike, from different origins and apparently
harbouring no suspicion of caste borders or social backgrounds.

Another discovery was more accidental but, a late one, I
had no time to really investigate it. Dozens of pocket theatres
are spreading throughout the city. One of those theatres
was next to my hotel so I could observe it. Beyond a tiny
courtyard edging Rash Behari Crossing, you can guess by a
blackboard filled with names, titles, prices and dates that
you are near a performance hall. Actually you already had
that premonition because in front of the blackboard was the
kind of ticket kiosk you are accustomed to see at alternative
theatres. If you carry on across the courtyard, you pass
a porch and there you are in front of a stage, facing the
steep slope of an amphitheatre. Lights and rails, curtains
and velvet, you are indeed in a theatre. There, my guide
tells me, you can attend many kinds of plays, mostly modern
adaptations of long running traditional dramas such as Mahabarata
or Ramayana. But some theatres perform only modern stuff,
some only satirical reviews, some poetry, some contemporary
authors, etc. These groups are not funded by state or federal
institutions. Sometimes they get money from a philanthropist.
But the great majority are militant, that is to say, free.
The chic du chic for those dramatists is to perform in the
country. If they’ve had some success in town, and gathered
some dough, they can offer a couple of days or a week of
magic to Bengali villagers.

Network of addas, network of magazines, network of theatres,
everything is about connections in Calcutta. ‘I was
glad to meet you at such network, but I would like to invite
you in my more private adda…’ a former history
professor tells me and another one, a communist activist.
Calcutta is a network of networks.

I dropped into the vortex of a network once. It was not entirely
by accident for I had been told about it by a French friend,
who was once almost a Calcuttan. The place is deep in the
heart of the city, what local people call the centre, the
most active, vibrant, crazy neighborhood of the city. I took
my meals at Penjabi dhabba, a small restarant nearby, between
Park street and Middleton street; they had rich and cool
lassies and Punjabis are supposedly reliable. Customers of
the dhabba were of the kind that could not or would not be
satisfied by a fast meal caught standing on the sidewalk
of Mukherjee road like most local yuppies: those who would
fancy a good ten minutes in the fresh and clean atmosphere
of the dhabba, eating a real bowl of rice with spiced vegetables
and dhal.

A five minute walk from my Punjabi dhabba, off Middleton
street, you follow a sign that promises Drive Inn. That
is another type of restaurant, a strictly vegetarian
restaurant
for executives needing to talk business, and families
in search of a peaceful retreat. Surprising high
flamboyant
and tall pipal trees welcome you in their shade, casting
a mellow atmosphere. Drive Inn restaurant prices are
not for anyone in town and neither are the cars sold
under
the same name, SUVs and rutilant limousines. But if
your eye
is sharp enough, you will notice a hand-written sign
that says ‘Bookstore’ with an arrow. That is what
you were after. So walk on along this path under the tall
pipal trees. There it is, the cabin in the tree. You wouldn’t
have believed your eyes had you not been informed beforehand.
Made from the woven vegetal fibres that you had noticed in
the remote Bengali villages where they had already reminded
you of the early black-and-white movies of Satyajit Ray,
the cabin defies gravity and urban traditions in that hectic
part of the city. Another sign repeats ‘Earthcare Bookstore & resource
center/ inside, classic books/ organic rice and potatoes
for sale here’. There, the last sign by the door
encourages you, if you find a closed door, to ring the
bell. That I
do.

After a while a pretty lady comes down the stairs from
the cabin. Vinita is frail and her eyes shine. She asks
me where
I come from and what are my centres of interest. Then
she introduces me to the bookstore. The store itself
is tiny,
hardly three rooms piled with books turned face up, thus
easily displaying their titles and author’s names.
The ‘centres of interest’, as Vinita put it,
are diverse. Good Indian classic and contemporary fiction,
a fine choice of gender studies, selected religious and philosophical
stuff such as the Vedas, the classical Upanisads, Vivekananda,
Krishnamurti and so on, anthropological surveys of India
and elsewhere, Indian mythology. But what Vinita is rightly
proud of is the environmental fund. This fund proposes both
high scientific studies and political debates by authors
from all over the world. That is when I realise that all
those books are in English. It is not the case at the huge
bookstore on Park street that sells books in English, Hindi,
Bengali and other Indian languages. ‘That is my choice,’ explains
Vinita, ‘for English is, as a matter of fact, the
scientific language and the only language spoken in all
of India.’

Filling my basket with selected publications I discover
that some of them have been published by Earthcare Bookstore
itself
(www.earthcarebooks.com); and that this place with the
cabin in the tree is only the geographical centre of
a large network
of various merchandise among which is rice, potatoes,
books, literary reviews and probably political discourse
as well.
Before I leave, Vinita registers my name in her e-mail
address book so that we can keep in touch. That is the
point. When
I talk about my visit to Earthcare Bookstore to my Calcuttan
friends, some of them agree that this is not only an
original place but also an important spot in the the
city. ‘You
cannot imagine how much energy this city gives me,’ reckons
Vinita when asked about her cabin in the tree. ‘Someone
wrote a book saying that, in a way, Calcutta resembles
Naples. Have you ever been to Naples? In which way could
those cities
look alike?’

I recall a photograph seen in Paris just before I left
for India. This photograph showed the shore of the Gulf
of Bengal
within fifteen years when the waters have risen up because
of global warming. Calcutta didn’t exist any more
in the photo, inundated by the flooded delta of Ganga,
the Ganges.
This threat is much nearer than that of the Vesuvius
in Naples. And also nearer than the threat of the San
Andreas fault
upon the city of San Francisco. However, citizens of
those three cities should have many feelings and facts
to discuss.
Would the imminent destruction of a city give a special
energy to its inhabitants? To me, this energy is a constant
surprise.

On my first night in Transit House, I understood I was
in a Tamil district by the drums of a wedding procession.
A
South Indian wedding procession is one of the most curious
urban scenes in India. The bride disguised as a prisoner
princess from the Thousand and One nights is carried,
still, silent and alone, on a huge chariot, inside a
red and gold
throne flashing with a million electric bulbs. The bridegroom
follows ten meters behind, disguised as a defeated Baghdad
prince. The third chariot carries the many batteries
and electronics that dispatch a deafening musical din
across
the neighbourhood. The chariots I saw were not pulled
by tractors but by well paid Brahmins behind the drummers
beating their drums and followed by a meagre crowd of
family
members.
This part of town is indeed a Tamil colony. Later I noticed
the Madras style lunghees worn by the men and jasmine
arrangements in the ladies’ plated hair, typical
of the South. Also there seems to be a specific pride
in the slow gait of people,
but of that, I am not sure. Those South Indians work,
I was told later, in Lake market where they are shoulder
carriers.

Lake Market almost reaches my Transit House but stops half
a block away. For the past year, the building of the market
has been under reconstruction, letting the vendors and
customers spread all over the adjacent streets. Like a
tide they come
from early morning to mid afternoon. But in Raj Basanta
Roy, as this streets lies on the fringes of the market,
you only
find small stalls selling on the sidewalk fruit and vegetables
of all colours and fragrance - probably villagers selling
their own crops.

In the late morning, the summer heat begins to hit, slowing
pedestrians and cyclists alike. Only few of the old orange
Ambassador taxes cruise around along with some small
Marutis cars. A gang of five children invade the roadway.
They
are three or four years old, dressed in rags and barefoot.
They
play cricket. One of them holds a piece of wood pretending
to be a bat. The other four run after a moss ball, catch
it, throw it and pitch it like they have seen on TV.
No, actually, they never catch and always miss the ball.
But
that doesn’t matter. The catcher wears a cross
around his neck. Christian? It could be. Keralite? Who
knows? A
motorbike passes with four people aboard, daddy wears
a helmet, mum is riding side-saddle. As I am sitting
near the door
of my hotel, chatting with the doorman disguised as an
army officer, he calls the pitcher and slips a couple
of coins
into his hand. The other boys instantly rush towards
the lucky one to check what he got. Two coins of two
rupees,
great day! They already talk eagerly about what they
will buy with this unexpected wealth.

Early afternoon is the time of real heat. A very tall
mango tree lets its branches loaded with still green
fruit, hang
from atop. The flamboyant that here is called Krishnachurra
spreads out its shining red-orange flowers next to a
Gulmohur that displays a yellow firework of bright flowers.
They
are supposed to play the roles and recite the dialogues
of Rada
and Krishna, the mythical lovers. Facing me, from the
other side of a hoarding, a tropical garden overflows
banana
leaves and bouganvilleas’ violet flowers. The rare
passers-by tend to slow down to refresh under this unexpectedly
heavy
shade. It is naptime. Khanai, the decaying dog protected
and fed by the young hotel boys, sticks out his tongue
and avoids moving.

Later in the afternoon, a barber squats on the sidewalk,
ten meters from my seat, in front of his client who maintains
the same position. They chat gently and have good stories
to laugh about. The barber holds his client’s face
with one hand while the other brushes his black face
with a thick white lather. Then he gently passes the
razorblade
on his cheeks. He guides over his face holding the bridge
of his nose. The next two customers wait in the same
position, commenting through gestures and talking very
softly about
nothing. Gestures and words go very slow. A few yards
further, four men play cards on a blanket displayed on
the sidewalk.
No superfluous words here either at this time of day,
but still a sense of great attention, proving that money
is probably
at stake.

From where I sit, I can decipher two signs. One is about
Sikkim Manipal University. It celebrates the many diplomas
available from this supposedly prestigious institution
located, as written, near Kali Ghat: ‘BBA, BCA, BSCT, IT, Education
garanteed, Career assured, Future secured’, all this
proved by the photo of a sexy blonde girl smiling with 32
shiny white teeth and a couple of phone numbers. The other
sign is pitched above an electrical transformer. It says,
in huge red letters on a yellow background, that ‘in
case of power interruption, you can call 1912’.

Life returns with the lengthening shadows. Ladies walk
like princesses after their working day, their hair still
perfectly
plated, draped in flawless pink or bright blue saris,
their back straight, in gracious flocks. Men hold their
attaché case
like high- ranking executives. Kids ply their way back
home in stylish uniforms. Middle class India is a proud
population
that has a real project to conquer the world and some
ammunition for that. Calcutta is not an industrial city.
Overcrowded
by the two waves of refugees from East Bengal or, say,
Bangladesh, Calcutta needed a couple of decades to digest
its huge population.
The asset of this city in the global race is culture.
Bengal is a state of refined and prolific artistic production.
In
Calcutta what is mostly sought after is education. The
city is rich in high priced schools where philosophy,
sports,
electronics and languages are taught by selected teachers.
Middle class India comes back from its working day, having
much more to conquer but proud of the past achievements.
Some old fashioned nababs cross the neighbourhood in
man-pulled rickshaws. The night falls. In Bengali, this
time of day
is called khonedekhalu, when the pink light turns girls
into stars encouraging fathers to introduce their unmarried
daughters
into rich and educated families.

When night comes, the first fires of the families living
on the sidewalk can be seen where Raj Basanta Roy meets
Mukherjee road. The ladies cook food in big cauldrons
upon charcoal
grills. Young children come back from a day of fight
for life as usual. Babies are laid upon mats. Men will
come
later or will never come. The homeless are extremely
poor and hunger
is often suffered, but most of those families are proud
and little misery can be observed on this sidewalk. On
the very
crossing of Rash Behari a huge image of Mother Theresa,
whose little statues can also be seen among saints and
gods, reminds
of the harshness of time, but charity might very well
be a westerner’s fantasy. Bengalis do not beg.
Those street families will come to sleep when the fires
vanish and the
Bengali night will be another time for oblivion.

When I leave Kolkata, my taxi drives me across Salt Lake
City. This is a new town, north of Calcutta. The 9% GDP
increase flows huge investments into the future seen
here as an opportunity
for a kind of greedy revenge as well as a chance to escape
poverty for the poor. It is nighttime again and the landscape
is still, looking dead. Hundreds of cranes have been
working all day to contribute to this super city supposed
to compete
with Bangalore in developing new technologies that make
the international success of India. My taxi wallah is
very proud
of Salt Lake. I can’t find the words to express
my doubt without offending him.

* Nandigram is where a peasants’ revolt
took place against an industrial project fomented by the
communist led
government that threatened to expel villagers from their
land. The official toll is 14 people killed. Unofficial figures
are more like 100.

Marc
Hatzfeld is an anthropologist living in Paris and working
(both as a researcher and a consultant) on subjects such
as homelessness, juvenile delinquency, immigration, suburban
life and respect. His recent books include Petit Traité de
la banlieue (2004), Les Dézingués (2006),
La culture des cités (2006) and Petites fabriques
de la démocratie (2007).